Fairy Nymph: Kirsty Hume

By Tim Walker

Victoria's Secret Catwalk 1999

By Mario Testino

The Day Before the First

Tomorrow's going to be the first day of my major examinations. It's hard to grasp how after eighteen years, and after these two weeks and a half have passed, I can burn my books in a bonfire and it won't matter anymore.

I perhaps shouldn't even be writing up this post right now, but I was reading a few poems preparing for my unseen commentary tomorrow and came across this, which I felt was the perfect and most timely advice quelling my imminent freak-out (cue Chic's Le Freak and replace it with "not chic) before my literature examination.

Introduction to Poetry  By Billy Collins
I ask them to take a poem  and hold it up to the light  like a colour slide
 or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out,   or walk inside the poem’s room  and feel the walls for a light switch. 
I want them to waterski   across the surface of a poem  waving at the author’s name on the shore.
 But all they want to do   is tie the poem to a chair with rope   and torture a confession out of it. 
 They begin beating it with a hose   to find out what it really means.